A heating and/or air conditioning system is intended to heat or cool a room, in which the system is located, and/or one or more further rooms.
In order to avoid superfluous energy costs, in the case of a heating system a reference temperature, to which the heating system heats an environment, should not be unnecessarily high. Similarly, an air conditioning system should not cool an environment to an unnecessary extent.
Many people regard as sufficient for a sleep phase a lower room temperature and thus a lower heating output of a heating system. For example the room temperature can be decreased by 1° C. to 5° C. during sleep. To reduce the costs of an air conditioning system, a higher room temperature can also be accepted during sleep. In known methods and control apparatuses a night mode is therefore set at night.
When the night mode is switched on in a generic method an energy consumption of the heating and/or air conditioning system, i.e. a heating or cooling output, is reduced, and when the night mode is switched off it is increased. The night mode can therefore also be described as an energy saving mode.
In a generic control apparatus for switching on and off a night mode of a heating and/or air conditioning system, a setting device is provided which can be connected to the heating and/or air conditioning system in order to change the heating and/or cooling output of the heating and/or air conditioning system. An energy consumption of the heating and/or air conditioning system is thereby reduced when the night mode is switched on and increased when the night mode is switched off.
Outside of the night mode, i.e. in a day mode, the energy consumption can be constant or variable. In particular, the day mode can additionally be interrupted by further phases, in which the energy requirement can be even lower than in the night mode. This may be desirable if nobody is present for many hours in the rooms to be heated or cooled.
It is known to set a night mode according to a time schedule as a function of clock time. It is hereby possible to achieve a certain concordance with actual sleep phases of a person. Typically, however, clock times, at which persons go to sleep and get up again, are variable. If a person remains awake for longer than usual, a heating or cooling output of the heating and/or air conditioning system is turned down too early in the case of a fixed time schedule. A room temperature is thereby set to an undesired value. If a person goes to bed earlier than usual, a fixed time schedule leads to an unnecessarily high heating or cooling output. Correspondingly, ending of the night mode according to a fixed time schedule leads to unnecessarily high heating or cooling outputs, which are associated with considerable costs, or to room temperatures that are considered to be unpleasant.